monkeybard | JWP 2019 #13: Eye to Eye (BBC Sherlock)

Eye to Eye
By MonkeyBard
Rating: G
Length: 555
Universe: BBC-Sherlock
Summary: A chat between brothers.
Date: 13 July 2019
JWP #13: Ah Youth! Entries today should include a main character as a child. Whether this is literal, figurative, as a memory or backstory, or via some deaging hootenannies, all is fair play.
A/N: Have you met my version of Sherrinford Holmes? If not, you're about to.

Ford had never gone so far from home. At least not since his death. But these were extraordinary circumstances.

He slipped silently up beside Sherlock’s hospital bed. Out in the hallway, nurses passed quietly by. One glanced in but of course didn’t see him.

It was late. John slept awkwardly on a chair in the corner. He looked about wrecked, so Ford chose not to wake him. He was glad the nurse didn’t wake him either.

He decided that Sherlock looked awful. Downright pasty and even skinnier than usual. He was there because a woman had shot him. Ford didn’t know who, exactly, but he knew somehow that it was a woman. He decided he’d hate her if he ever met her.

Looking across his youngest brother’s bed, he saw a child’s face staring back at him from the other side.

“I recognize you,” the boy said.

“Of course you do. Mummy keeps plenty of pictures of me around,” said Ford. “I recognize you, too. You’ve always been naff and a bit slow.”

The other ghostly boy frowned. “That’s a rotten thing to say.”

Ford puffed himself up as much as he could. “Big brothers are supposed to be rotten sometimes. It toughens up the small fry like you.” Then he relented. “But I wouldn’t have been rotten all the time if I’d been around more. I liked you okay. I still do, even though you’re naff. You bring John around. I like John.”

“Me too.” The other boy looked over at John asleep in the chair and smiled. Then he looked at the man in the bed who was connected to breathing tubes and an IV bag of clear liquid. His smile faded. “That’s me.”

“Yep.”

He examined his ghostly self thoroughly. “Why would I choose to look like this, like I did when I was ten years old, when I’m really a grown man?”

Ford shrugged. “Dunno.”

“So you’re not that clever after all,” child-ghost-Sherlock said dryly.

Ford laughed. “Yeah. You’re all right, really.” He grew sombre. “You should go back now.”

“In there?” Sherlock pointed to his physical form.

“Where else?”

He shook his head. “It hurts in there.”

“It’ll stop. Eventually. You should go back.”

“I don’t want to.”

Ford thought hard for an argument that would convince him. “It’ll hurt John even more if you don’t.”

Sherlock was silent and that’s how Ford knew he agreed. The brothers’ gazes met across the pale figure in the bed.

“I don’t think I’ll remember this,” said Sherlock.

“If you do, you’ll think you dreamed it.”

“It’s a nice dream.”

“Yeah. See you around.”

Sherlock only nodded and reached out to his grown, unconscious, injured self.

Before he slipped back inside, Ford said quickly. “Visit Mummy more. We miss you.”

“You know I won’t.”

“I know. But when you do come, you’ll bring John, and that’ll make up for it.”

Ghostly young Sherlock faded and was gone. Medical machines beeped in the quiet that followed.

Flesh-and-blood adult Sherlock shifted. His eyes slowly peeled open. He turned his head on the pillow and, looking through Ford, his gaze locked on John. He smiled the tiniest, tiredest smile Ford had ever seen.

“You’ll be okay now, little brother. I’ll see you back home. Tell John I said hi.”

Ford thinned like mist and was gone.